IS IT SPRING YET? Spring training is in full swing, games and all, but you wouldn't know it from the weather reports, where it seems more like January than March. Yet another winter storm cutting across the country has delayed House and Senate votes today, closed DC-area federal government offices and forced the cancellation of thousands of flights. Thanks to an expected layer of ice insulated by inches of snow, getting around, into and out of the Washington region will be tough today. Hundreds of Monday flights at DCA, IAD and BWI were cancelled on Sunday in anticipation of the storm. All Metro bus service in D.C. is suspended this morning and Amtrak’s Northeast Regional and Acela Express trains are running at reduced frequencies. In short: Stay safe out there, folks. Yours truly has the story on POLITICO: http://politi.co/1ddTYDy

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THE WEEK AHEAD — Today: The National Association of Counties’ legislative conference features speeches today from House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster, Acting Deputy Transportation Secretary Victor Mendez and POLITICO’s own Mike Allen. The National Bike Summit kicks off today as well.

Tuesday: Budget day! The White House puts out its newest budget request that’s expected to include a fleshed-out version of the president’s four-year, $302 billion surface transportation bill that was unveiled last week. Speaking of...NACo holds an afternoon rally for a long-term transportation bill, including appearances from Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer, T&I highways panel Chair Tom Petri, Railroads ranking member Corrine Brown and infrastructure bank supporter Rep. John Delaney, among others. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx speaks at both the NACo conference and the Bike Summit. House Transport’s Coast Guard panel holds the second part of its hearing on maritime transportation, focusing on how environmental regulations have affected maritime issues.

Wednesday: House T&I’s special P3 panel holds a hearing on public-private partnerships for highway and transit projects as the committee gears up to write its transportation bill. Both the Bike Summit and the NACo conference wrap up.

Thursday: The Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing on the federal role in and challenges facing public transportation. And a Senate Commerce panel holds a hearing on passenger and freight rail safety.

DON’T MOPE BECAUSE IT’S MONDAY. Thanks for reading POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on trains, planes, automobiles and ports, where on this day in 1845, Florida became the 27th state. Please be in touch: asnider@politico.com and on Twitter at @ AdamKSnider.

IN TODAY’S FEDERAL REGISTER: The FAA puts out an airworthiness directive that the Wall Street Journal describes as “cockpit-automation fixes on nearly 500 Boeing Co. 737 planes, seeking to prevent pilot errors that over the years have caused fatal crashes of several jet and turboprop airliners.” WSJ has more ( http://on.wsj.com/1hEwpEN) or you can read the AD for yourself ( http://1.usa.gov/1lu1mzp).

CHRISTIE CAMP TIED TO TOLL HIKES: Gov. Chris Christie’s political circle is now tied to a plan to offer massive toll hikes on Port Authority of New York and New Jersey bridges and tunnels so that the state’s governors could then step in and take credit for lowering them. Both the Star-Ledger and The Record each spoke to a half-dozen Port Authority sources for their damning stories with terms like “secretive,” “sleight of hand” and “fictional.” Here’s the Star-Ledger: “From the start, the fix was in, said that former official and five others who occupied key Port Authority posts when the toll hike was rolled out and eventually approved. The whole process, the authority officials said, was orchestrated from the outset to make the governors look good even as they reached deeper, through the long arm of the authority, into the public’s pockets.” http://bit.ly/1fBgEQs

Bonus material: The Record’s story has a handy chart of the toll hikes in recent and future years: http://bit.ly/1eTix4Z

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PILOT SHORTAGE? OR PAY SHORTAGE? Kathryn has the story: “A new GAO report says the jury’s still out about whether there really is a shortage of commercial airline pilots, but if there is one, it may be because of low salaries at regional airlines. The airlines and some mainline carriers, such as JetBlue, have argued that a shortage of pilots has forced them to cancel flights or reduce schedules since a new FAA rule that went into effect in January drastically increased the experience requirements for pilots of commercial airliners. Prior to the rule, a copilot needed only 250 hours to get behind a control yoke. Now that copilot must have 1,500 hours — the same as what was previously needed to be a captain. A GAO report released Friday says there is ‘mixed evidence’ about whether a pilot shortage exists. One key indicator — unemployment — has been much lower than the economy as a whole, which is consistent with a shortage, the report says, but it also notes that wage earnings and employment data were not consistent with a shortage.” Pros get her full story: http://politico.pro/1hyj95l

Regionals have a different take: A statement from Regional Airline Association President Roger Cohen didn't mention the pilot pay issue, instead pegging the blame on the new qualifications. “Some 70% of the US relies on regional airlines for their only scheduled flights, and RAA has been among many that have said this 1500 hour rule was an arbitrary ‘quantity versus quality’ standard,” he said.

MORE COMMITTEE SHUFFLES: Sen. Richard Blumenthal has taken over the gavel of the Commerce Committee’s surface transportation and safety panel, a post that will let him continue his recent push in rail safety. Sen. Mark Warner had led the panel, but he has moved on from the committee and now sits on the Finance Committee that was chaired by now-Ambassador Max Baucus.

CONDITIONS & PERFORMANCE: FHWA is out with its new, 2013 edition of the “Status of the Nation's Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions & Performance.” Based mostly on 2010 data, the report is hundreds of pages of current and projected figures in just about everything you can measure. It always grabs a few headlines for the shockingly large numbers listed as what the country needs to spend each year to either keep up or improve the current condition of infrastructure — one example is $146 billion for better roads. See the full report: http://1.usa.gov/NKBhgY

Not down with VMT: But it’s the VMT figures — and how DOT is predicting more miles driven despite a recent down-tick — that caught one group’s eye. “The US DOT seems to be stuck in a bizarre time warp. For nine years in a row Americans have decreased their average driving miles,” said U.S. PIRG senior analyst Phineas Baxandall. “We haven’t seen an annual increase of even one percent in total vehicle miles since 2004. Yet, US DOT forecasts that total vehicle miles will increase between 1.36 percent to 1.85 percent each year through 2030. That doesn't make sense.”

SETTING UP CAMP: House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s tax draft drew praise from a wide range of transportation interests for how it addresses the Highway Trust Fund. But not everybody is a fan, especially outside of the transpo-bubble. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget takes issue with the trust fund language. Here’s CRFB transport expert Ed Lorenzen in a blog post: “In short, the bill double counts temporary revenue from taxation of foreign earnings held overseas to both extend the life of the HTF — a variation of which has been proposed in Congress and by President Obama — and to meet the goal of revenue neutrality over ten years.” More: http://bit.ly/1cm08DC

THE AUTOBAHN (SPEED READ)

- Boeing is likely to submit a Dreamliner repair plan to Air India after a number of problems in the carrier’s fleet. Indian Express: http://bit.ly/1mPuP8C

- Op-ed against connected cars: “The lesson of Footloose is pertinent: When you force people to be safe, you force them to be miserable.” USA Today: http://usat.ly/1ltxWRL

- Hybrid owners in Virginia will get their recently-repealed $64 fee back, but not until July 1, state DMV says. Daily Press: http://bit.ly/1dRVzLZ

THE COUNTDOWN: MAP-21 expires and DOT funding runs out in 212 days. FAA policy is up in 577 days. The mid-term elections are in 246 days and the 2016 presidential election is in 981 days. MLB’s Opening Day is in 28 days.

CABOOSE — Bike queen: To celebrate this year’s National Bike Summit, here’s an old picture of 16-year-old actress Annette Funicello, with a spiffy sash bearing her title: Bicycle Queen of 1959. Shorpy: http://bit.ly/1mP52gF

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About The Author

Adam Snider is a transportation reporter for POLITICO Pro and author of Morning Transportation. He has covered transportation since 2007, joining POLITICO in 2011 to launch MT and later found the word “Mica-ism.”

Snider is a fan of all modes of transportation, though nothing beats a good silly walk. In his spare time, he can be found brewing a hoppy beer, rooting for the Nationals, watching a bad 1970s horror movie or exploring the District from his home base in Mount Pleasant.

Adam studied English and communications at Clemson University in South Carolina. His work has been featured by Nieman Journalism Lab and his snark has appeared on MSNBC. He has had several works of fiction published in literary journals and is constantly reminded of his proclamation to a fiction professor many years ago that journalism is for sellouts who abandon their creative dreams.